nursing or marriage nurssing or marriage. i cant decide which i want to write first about. well lets go with nursing. so i worked the past 2 days i have two days off then i work 3 , 1 off, 3 on. ugh. so much. i switched with a girl bc she needed the day so that why my schedule is kinda packed. its not too too bad. but i feel like i am still trying to get used to working. i have had this discussion more than a few times with thomas and my dad and others but it still bothers me. i guess i never really had to work when it wasnt super flexible and someone that i knew. now i have the responsibilites of things like sick days or PTO and scheduling, benefits, taxes blah blah blah. lucklily when i moved into this job meeting people wasnt too hard to do. both of my preceptors (from new grad and sem 8 were great and introducing me to others. And nursing is crazy. you have to talk and interact with other nurses in order to survive in the nursing unit. especially being a student you have to ask a lot of questions and i say have to because if you dont and keep things in the dark and just go ahead like you know something it will only get worse when you mess us and have to tell someone instead of just asking in the first place.

anyways, i think it was great to start off as a new grad in the night shift. lucky for me i did my sem 8 rotation at the same unit and got to do day shift so i got to see what day shift was like. i worked night shift 12 hours 7pm to 7 am for about 3 months. it was a good shift to start because i think you work more as a team with the other nurses as well as do things for yourself more because you dont have your own nursing assistant. now on PM's i have my own nursing assistant who follows me and another nurse. on nights you have one for the whole unit plus they are supposed to give bed baths to at least 3 patients ( which can take awhile).

so on nights you take your own vitals, ambulate your patients, take them to the bathroom, clean up your patients, turn your patients in addition to medications, charting, and hourly rounding. thats the other thing about night shift. i was always a little more unsettled because your patient's arent awake and there are not others checking in on your patients or workign with them like massage therapists, CNA's. Physical therapy, resp therapy... so it is your job to make sure they are breathing. which makes sense when you only need to hourly round and you tend to go into their room 3 or 4 times just to watch them sleep and make sure their chest is rising and falling. not everyone sleeps though either - you hear the tv running in someone's room, the call for pain meds, or the call for a sleeping pill oh and the bathroom. then you also get the patients who are confused or have dementia and here the bed alarm go off and you run to find them sprawled across the bed with their head and legs hanging off the sides. they definetly keep you on your toes.

the emergency calls that get called on our unit are kind of different on nights too. there are a lot of low blood sugars like in the 20's because they get their sugars checked at 9 and are given insulin and are suppposed to eat something but ppl are confused or they fall asleep or they dont like the food yadda yadda yadda and then their sugar comes crashing down and you have to get it up.

we tend to have a few more falls at night. people try to go to the bathroom when they think they can make it but forget about their iv being hooked up or slip. we had a few bad instances where that happened. unfortunately one of the guys was already slowly bleeding into his brain and that fall might have rattled it a little bit more and he passed away a couple days after. so we are super careful about patients and falling. bed alarms, frequent checks, constant reminding the patients to call us if they wanna get up.

anyways but like i was saying although you have to do a lot of things on your own, the other nurses know that its sometimes hard doing things by yourself. so when someone needs to turn a patient you offer to help them so they dont hurt their back. i tried turning a patient by myself once bc i didnt want to bother anyone and a nurse came in and told me she would slap me with a wet noodle if i ever tried to do it by myself again :). or if you have an er admit as soon as they come up you get up and help the nurse bc its too hard to try and transfer the pt, assess, release orders, and get vitals for one nurse. i liked working as a team on nights. one of my night shift nurses asked if i wanted to come back to nights and i said maybe sometime and she asked why - i said i missed them and i feel that they are more bonded. its quiet during the hours of 2 - 5 so you have to talk with others so you can stay awake. plus getting that hour nap (lunch break) was pretty nice too. i didnt think i would be able to sleep for an hour , wake up and do nursing but i got the hang of it and really if you dont sleep i just feel groggy the rest of the night. the only thing was i was always super warm when i woke up and i would be freezing cold when i woke up so i bought a coupe long sleeve shirts and would change into them after i woke up.

well anyways, thats my take on night shift for now. i think ill add more later. well see. and ill add a pm shift note too so you can see the difference.

xoxo you know you love me